There was a spoof car advertisement floating around the web recently. I don’t know if you saw it. It looked like a typical car spread from a glossy magazine, a stylish coupe pouring over a winding scenic road. The text implied that the car was called “The Bailout. Coming this January” and the sub-text read: “You wouldn’t buy our shitty cars. So we’ll be taking your money anyways.” Apparently General Motors is on the brink of bankruptcy. And when I say “brink” I really mean that sometime today they will be officially filing for bankruptcy, marking what will likely be the long, slow death of the monumental corporation. After all, even if it survives the near-death experience will have changed it in ways that can [...]

Welcome to the First Great Recession of the Twenty-Somes. As the economy sheds jobs, industry giants stumble and fall, and governments hemorrhage cash, I’m fairly sure there will be stories to tell: Good-bye Pontiac. Should I shed a tear for your departure? Perhaps had you treated us better I might have felt badly. But, we in our moment of prenuptial frustration turned to you for an economy car and you sold us — yes, an inexpensive vehicle but also — the indifferent and often corrupt service that has left me with the last laugh at your demise. Tell me where they bury you so I can… oh, never mind. This morning I drove past the largest auction in Canadian history. (CBC Radio placed the claim, [...]

Welcome to the First Great Recession of the Twenty-Somes. As the economy sheds jobs, industry giants stumble and fall, and governments hemorrhage cash, I’m fairly sure there will be stories to tell: Have you seen the advertisement for GMC currently running on American stations? We’re treated to a montage of little historic clips of massive infrastructure projects — the railway, bridges, buildings, highways, etc — with their build-date played across the bottom of the screen. Epic music rolls in the background. And the announcer explains that the country had been built on the hard work and dependability of GMC trucks. And “long live infrastructure” is splashed front and center over a shiny, new vehicle model. I’ve only seen it once though, so forgive me if [...]

I guess we must be hard to buy for. For Christmas, Karin’s folks bought us a Tagine. Now, don’t get me wrong. It’s very… uh… eclectic and cool. But we’ve been encountering some issues with finding an opportunity to make use of it. Problem One: How to Preserve Lemons. So, the Tagine came with a recipe pamphlet. I, being the investigative and adventurous person I am, decided (about a month ago) that we needed to cook something from said pamphlet. Because the recipe called for an odd sort-of ingredient, we’ve needed to be somewhat adventurous in our pre-prep. Thus, over the course of the last month our kitchen has been home to a small enterprise in preserving lemons. That’s right, we need preserved lemons — [...]

We sat down for a few hours last night and finished off our tax returns. You’d almost think that we’d get on that sooner. After all, with RRPs, RRSPs, donations, moving expenses, and a change in province of residence we’re in line to get a healthy refund. Neither is it really, truly a chore: gone are the days of filling out reams of incoprehensible papers. Not that I ever did it that way anyhow: Now you just get your receipts in neat, little piles, log onto the system, click through the online forms, fill in the blanks, pay the $25 fee for quicktax, upload the tax files, download the backup files, have a nap and wait for the government to send you your money. Alas. [...]

Is it truely bad form to herald the collapse of modern society? It’s not like I’m going to go purchase a sandwich board, write doom-sayer phrases in bold letters, and parade myself up and down Jasper Avenue. At least, not quite yet. But, more often it seems, there is an apparent antagonism towards the warnings of our imminent changes. According to sources, the American debt is a little less than eight trillion dollars. Perspective? That works out to about twenty-six thousand dollars per person in the US. That’s a lot of money. Work that out across time, and that big ol’debt number is generously increasing by roughly, say, the equivalent of my mortgage — every two seconds. Sure, the Canadian economy is trudging along fine [...]